


Pesadillas

by inconocible



Series: Colleen Shepard [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Mild Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-16 13:59:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3490946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inconocible/pseuds/inconocible
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t, I can’t —</p>
<p>"Wake up, Commander."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pesadillas

"Hi," she whispers. 

"Hi yourself, ‘Leen."

"Don’t call me that," she says, mock-indignation coloring her lowered voice. 

"Is your mom asleep?" 

"Dunno. She thinks I am." She is lying in bed with the lights out, her back to the door of her room, ready to throw the covers over her omnitool if need be. "I have to be quiet. Tell me how things are going."

He talks to her, in the familiar way only a 16-year-old boy can: The runner beans are growing in the garden; I did well on my calculus test but got a B-minus on my English paper; the fish were biting strong out at the lake this weekend; baby, I miss you; I wish I were with you; I can’t wait to see you again; I can’t wait to touch you again, Colleen; what if you touched yourself and let me listen… 

His voice is lulling her to sleep, soothing her. She snorts a giggle at the final suggestion — it’s just past is 0100 and maybe Mom hasn’t gone to bed yet. “I can’t, it’s just not the same as when you touch me,” she whines, half-serious, contemplating giving in to his request, a little scared, a little bold.

He’s trying to talk her into it, doing it over the phone, complaining about the curse of long-distance relationships — “I’m not going to get to see you for months, ‘Leen,” — and then — “shit, Mom’s calling me. Hold on.”

She can hear him yelling, “What?” and this isn’t unusual, it must be getting near bedtime there. Maybe his mother needs a hand with making lunches for school tomorrow, or maybe his father wants to talk to him about repairing a piece of the farm equipment. She snuggles deeper into her bed, yawning, waiting for him to come back so she can say goodnight and go to sleep.

But he comes back not soft and sleepy, but breathless, alert. She can hear his mother screaming in the background. “Colleen! Call for help! The colony is under attack!”

"What?" she asks, jolting up in bed, blinking stupidly. 

"We’re being attacked! Get help!"

"No," she says, "no, I don’t —"

"Colleen, I love you," he says, and the call drops.

She tangles her hands in her duvet, breathing heavily. Helpless.

Then, “Mom!” she cries, paralyzed, unable to get out of bed. “Mom!”

Mom doesn’t answer. She forces herself to move. The light’s off in the living area. Mom’s already in bed. She bangs on the bedroom door. “Mom! Something’s happening on Mindoir. We have to call for help. Mom!”

She opens the bedroom door, expecting to walk in and shake her mother awake, but instead she finds not the bed and dresser but the containment tubes in the collector base, her mother floating in a human-sized vial of toxic liquid next to Kelly Chambers and Karin Chakwas. 

"It’s too late," Mom says. 

"No," she says. She reaches for her sidearm, but she’s not Commander Shepard, she’s Colleen and she’s still dressed for bed, pale legs and her boyfriend’s oversized t-shirt, and she is helpless.

"It’s too late, Colleen," Mom says. "You have to go. You have to get out of here."

Shepard twists her hands in the hem of her shirt. “There has to be something I can do. I got you out last time. I got everyone out. No one is supposed to die here.”

"Run," Mom says.

She does, turning toward the Normandy, the slap of her bare feet echoing through the base. She runs faster than she ever has in her life, until she is almost there and realizes she will need to jump. A flying leap, and she lands, tumbling head over heels —

And keeps running, after she lands. She is not on the Normandy but inside a dingy back-alley stronghold on a hostile world — Omega, why Omega? — and throws herself, confused, behind the scant cover of an overturned table as she hears an explosion detonate a little too close for comfort. The gunfire ceases but someone — a turian? — is crying out in pain and it clicks: oh, this.

She scrambles out from behind the table, crossing the room in long strides, kneeling next to his shoulder, pressing her hands, the hem of her shirt, anything, to the side of his face, hoping to staunch the bleeding. Her bare knees stick to the floor, glued down by too much blue blood.

Somewhere, in the distance, separate from herself, Commander Shepard is calling for an emergency evac, is ordering Jacob to check the perimeter, is handling the situation with poise and grace, but here, kneeling next to him, Colleen is whispering, “no, no, no, stay with me, please stay with me.” Commander Shepard has everything under control, but Colleen is helpless, and is falling in love, all at once, all in the same moment.

Her stream of whispers — come on, stay with me, I need you for this, don’t go, don’t leave me — is interrupted by a second volley of explosions. This isn’t right, she thinks, and suddenly he is gone, gone, and she’s standing on the Normandy, and she reaches for him in the emptiness, screaming his name, coming to her senses as Ashley is pleading with her: “Commander…” 

No, she thinks, no, and she doesn’t remember running to Joker, she doesn’t remember anything, she just knows fire and empty space and the sound of her own breathing echoing loud in her ear. She reaches behind her head, struggles with her O2 line. I can’t breathe, she thinks. She is gasping, panicking, thinking this can’t possibly be how it ends, helpless.

I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t, I can’t —

"Wake up, Commander."

Miranda?

"Commander. Wake up."

Male. Not Miranda.

"Garrus?" she gasps, on the cusp of hyperventilation, sitting up in bed like a scared 16-year-old girl. She can’t open her eyes. Her head is spinning. She clutches her forehead in one hand, reaching behind with the other, looking for the busted O2 line, trying to stop the blackness of space and asphyxiation from closing in. Her lungs are burning. "Garrus, I can’t breathe, I, I can’t—"

The man puts his hand on her shoulder, warm and heavy and steady, but wrong, wrong, wrong. He has too many fingers. She feels the mattress shift beneath her as he perches on the edge of the bed. “Hey,” the man says. “Come on, Lola. You got this. Slow it down. Breathe.” It clicks in her brain, the name he calls her: oh, this.

"Fuck," she says, little more than a sigh formed around the word, trying to calm down, trying to breathe more slowly. Her hairline is damp with sweat and her cheeks are wet and she guesses that she was crying in her sleep again, the only time she ever really does. 

"You’re in Vancouver," James says, his voice thick with sleep, beginning the brief sitrep, the calming, familiar litany of facts. "It’s, ah, 0449 in the morning. March 28th, 2186. No change on the Reaper situation yet."

She has told him before, through these miserable, stagnant months, that he should just let her sleep, that it doesn’t matter, that she’s fine, but maybe once or twice a week her nightmares wake him, two rooms away, and he comes to her anyway.

He always tells her that he can’t stand the sound of her lungs scrabbling for breath. “I thought I was gonna have to give you CPR,” he told her once, weeks ago, the first night he pulled her from a nightmare, trying to make a joke but smothering it in concern. 

The psychologists had cleared her, telling her that nightmares were perfectly normal and unavoidable in her situation. That knowledge didn’t help, never helped, not when she woke up like this.

"Hey," he says again, squeezing her shoulder. "Are you back? Shepard?" He doesn’t ask her if she’s okay. Hasn’t asked that in a couple months.

She forces herself to fill her lungs with air, holds the breath while she counts to ten, lets it out through her mouth. “Yeah,” she says, embarrassed, just like every other time, regretting that he’s seeing her like this, the half-broken human instead of the hero commander. “I’m here. Sorry.”

She opens her eyes, taking in his tousled bed-head and the sound of rain on the window pane of the luxury jail she’s indefinitely locked in. No change on the Reaper situation. Yet. Even if there were, she couldn’t do anything about it. Helpless. 

Carefully, respectfully, he grabs the corner of the sheet, blotting her sweaty, tear-stained face dry, feeling to her for all the world like the baby brother she never really had, the year-long siblings back on Mindoir, the ones who are dead now. “Nah,” he says, “don’t be.” 

He gets up, walks into the other room, comes back with a glass of water, offers it to her, stands silently at the window as she drinks, takes the glass when she’s finished, turns to go. Pauses in the door.

"Commander. I’m sorry," James says, and he takes a breath like he wants to say more, but he lets it go, shakes his head, retreats.


End file.
